


lucis et umbrae

by attheborder



Category: Good Omens (TV), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Character Study, Close Encounters of the Leitner Kind, Crossover, Gen, I Love My Dead Goth Son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:29:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21544546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: Gerry Keay tracks down a dangerous Leitner to a certain used bookshop in Soho.
Comments: 40
Kudos: 496
Collections: Clever Crossovers & Fantastic Fusions





	lucis et umbrae

It takes some doing, but Gerry Keay is nothing if not persistent. He manages, eventually, to learn that the last place the very dangerous Leitner he's seeking was seen was an international rare book fair in London, the previous week.

He intimidates the trader into giving him the information of the buyer, and hopes it’s not too late by the time he gets there. He hopes that his mother hasn’t beaten him to it, hasn’t arrived and done something unspeakably awful to the shop owner in order to get her hands on that 17th-century tome, Athanasius Kircher’s _Ars magna lucis et umbrae,_ which Leitner’s catalogue indicated had the power to induce a catastrophic hallucinatory state in the reader. 

When he gets there, prepared to lie and bargain and wheedle and terrify his way into possession of the eldritch volume, his heart falls as he steps in to see a pale, bookish man seated in a chair, the book propped open on his lap. 

“No—!” he yells, panicked, horrified. This is worse than being beaten by his mother, somehow. With that, at least, he could have had somewhere external to direct his anger. But now, the idea that if he’d just been a bit faster, a bit quicker to research, he could have saved this poor man from a ruined mind— there is only one direction to point the blame, and it’s towards himself. 

And then, as Gerry rushes forward, prepared to see the telltale swirls of distorted light behind the man’s eyes, marking him out as a lost cause, yet another casualty of a Leitner, the man _looks up at him._ His eyes are clear and blue, utterly and obviously entirely lucid. _How the fuck—?_

The man snaps the book shut. “Mr. Keay, I presume,” he says. “Um,” Gerry stammers, and the man smiles kindly and stands up from his chair, holding the book in wide, solid hands. 

Gerry points at the book, trying to regain some sense of his mission. “That book,” he says, and before he can continue the man interrupts, “It’s quite interesting, isn’t it?”

This nearly draws a laugh out of Gerry. _Interesting_ isn’t exactly the word he’d use to describe a Leitner tome that has permanently incapacitated six people in the last year. “It’s dangerous,” he says, as seriously as he can. “I don’t know how— look. If it hasn’t already done its damage on you, it’s only a matter of time. It’s got to be destroyed. Please. You’re in danger, as long as you’ve got it with you.” 

The man— who Gerry realizes must be the A.Z. Fell of the store’s marquee, though that hardly seems like a real name a person would have— looks him up and down, with a stare that seems to penetrate to the very heart of him. Gerry feels like he’s being— well. Read, like a book.

“I appreciate your concern,” Fell says, “but I assure you, it’s not needed. A thing like this could do just as much harm to me as you could.” He smiles, a little twinkly smile wildly at odds with the outlandish implications of his statement. 

“But my mother—” Gerry begins, wondering how he could possibly convey the threat Mary poses to anyone who stands in between her and her precious books. Fell, in his waistcoat and reading glasses, looks like he’d last about five minutes against the fearful torments she’s capable of dishing out, even in her weakened state of undeath.

“Your _mother,”_ says Fell, stern, like a schoolteacher, “is, I’m sure you won’t mind me saying, an utterly horrid woman. She knows very well that she’s not to come anywhere _near_ this bookshop, and the consequences that await her should she even so much as try.”

“…You _know_ her?” 

He raises his eyebrows. “In this profession, one must be acquainted at least superficially with one’s competition.”

Gerry’s eyes are drawn inexorably to the book Fell still holds in his hands. “I don’t want to take it from you by force,” he says, “but I will. If I have to. I’m telling you, it’s no good, I’ve got to destroy it—”

Fell _tsks_ softly, letting his gaze fall to the book as well. “Such a beautiful book,” he says quietly. “A shame, what’s been done to it…”

And now those eyes are on Gerry again, and he feels pinned beneath their weight. He’s suddenly conscious of the dirty blonde roots showing at his scalp, clashing with the black dye below; he’s aware of the holes in his shirt, worn down from constant wear; the pitted acne scars on his face and his crooked teeth. 

But Fell is not looking at him with judgement, not the way his mother did, constantly condescending, rating him short of standard. It’s whatever the _opposite_ of that is— a look of pure acceptance. _Pride,_ even— but how is that possible, when he’s never met this man before in his life—? 

“My dear boy,” says Fell, “you’ve done so _very_ well. I think it’s high time someone told you that.” 

He places the book gently into Gerry’s hands. Gerry is frozen in place for a moment, mind whirring prematurely with plans of how to destroy it (would it respond to flame? Necessitate drowning? Shredding, burying, a single stab to the heart of it? Would it demand a sacrifice, blood or flesh?) 

But then Fell snaps his fingers, and the air around them shivers, sings silently like a ringing bell, and the book crumbles cleanly to white ash in his hands. 

Gerry’s seen enough to not question the mechanics of such an act. 

Instead, he asks: “Why?”

Fell smiles now. “You remind me quite a bit of an… associate of mine. Someone who’s done me many a favor over the years. Sentimental of me, I suppose, but I have my vices.”

Gerry finds it hard to believe a man like Fell would associate with someone like him— if Fell were to have a friend, Gerry would imagine them to be another stuffy academic type, not a shabby goth with a sarcastic streak fathoms deep.

“Thank you, sir,” says Gerry, because Mary may have utterly failed to impress up on him her worldview and morality, but she certainly taught him his manners. 

“Oh, please,” says Fell, “call me Aziraphale.” 

He extends a warm hand and Gerry takes it, and mid-handshake something clicks in his mind. A tome in his mother’s library, an ancient and obscure manuscript containing illuminated portraits of the hierarchies of angels— one of the few books with pictures, so naturally one he read over and over as a child. One of the pages rattles around in his head and then settles, coming into focus. A white-robed, sun-haired angel with great white wings, bearing a flaming sword, and underneath it in black ink against gold leaf: _The Principality Aziraphale._

Gerry steps back, a bit shocked. Aziraphale sees the flicker of recognition in his eyes and raises a single finger to his lips conspiratorially. 

There’s a moment where Gerry thinks he might do something embarrassing like beg for help, or ask to stay a little longer, here in this wonderfully warm and bright and safe bookshop— but it passes, as his purpose reasserts itself inside of him with the burning force that’s kept him going for so long on his own. 

“Aziraphale,” he says, testing the ancient name on his tongue. “If you ever come across any more Leitners—”

“You’ll be the first to know, you have my word.”

Gerry nods. “I— You— you’ve got a very nice shop.” Aziraphale beams at him. “Best be off, though,” Gerry goes on. He dusts off the last of the white ash that used to be the Leitner from his hands and turns to go.

“Of course,” says Aziraphale understandingly. 

At the door, Gerry pauses, and turns back.

“Your friend,” he says. “The one I remind you of. For your sake, I hope he’s better than me at staying out of trouble.” 

“Ah,” says Aziraphale. “He _is_ trouble.” 

“Well. That's much better,” says Gerry, and with that, steps back out into the busy Soho street.

Disappearing into the crowd, he wonders in numb disbelief if that really just happened. If he really just encountered a guardian angel of some sort. 

What is an all-powerful creature like that doing owning a _bookshop_ of all things, in _London?_

Gerry supposes his mental association of "rare book dealer" with "curator of abominably evil items" requires some adjustment, after so many years of hatred towards the profession as driven by Mary and Leitner. 

And beyond that, how to even pay forward what Aziraphale did for him, what he promised to him? Gerry isn't in the habit of helping people; not even the ones he sees clearly, on the street or in shops, marked by a power beyond his comprehension, moving with every minute unknowingly towards their doom. It's none of his business. He's got his own problems, and plenty of them.

But he's off to Genoa next, in pursuit of another dangerous book and perhaps— yes, that might do well to settle his conscience. If he comes across someone being drawn to a dark fate (and he will, he always does, they're everywhere, orbiting around him like stars), he'll do what he can to drive it off. To save them. 

And he hopes, rather childishly, that when he does it, Aziraphale will know, somehow, and that he'll be proud. 

**

**Author's Note:**

> find me screaming about TMA and GO on tumblr at [@areyougonnabe](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com) !


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